Gambling and Fraud

August 31, 2016

$100 million plus defrauded by Australians to gamble

Over the past five plus years, a range of Australians have stolen to satisfy their compulsion to gamble. The impact on their lives, their family’s lives and those of the people and organisations they defrauded, has been profound. The impact has included people losing their jobs, having court orders issued requiring them to repay the stolen money, losing their homes and businesses having to close down. Some attempted suicide.

Carers have stolen from those who rely on and trust them. Bank staff have raided their customers’ accounts. Lawyers and accountants have thieved from their clients. Those giving their time to associations and other not for profits have abused their positions. Family has stolen from family and friends from friends.

Of the 267 persons convicted of an offence, 152 of them, or 57%, were male.

Total amount stolen was $104,143,790.

The largest fraud was $7.8 million.

The ten largest frauds contributed over $39.642 million to the losses. Eight of the perpetrators were male.

217 organisations were affected, with 148 cases of employee fraud.

There were 26 cases where fraud exceeded $1 million of which 20 were employees.

Men stole $67.139 million to gamble compared to $37.005 million by women.

The youngest person convicted was 18 and the oldest was 78 years old.

EFT fraud, theft of cash and false invoicing were the three most prevalent frauds.

Victoria had the highest number of frauds and the largest overall losses.

Employees were responsible for 56% of all fraud by number and 68% by value. They averaged $480,000 per fraud.

Staff in the Finance function were most likely to commit gambling motivated fraud against their employer.

Poker machines were by far the most regular mode of gambling by the offenders. This is consistent with the past two studies. Of the 75 cases where the mode of gambling could be identified for females, poker machines were the preferred mode in 62 cases.

19% of the offenders had a prior criminal history.

Government and Financial Services were the hardest hit in terms of both number of frauds and value.

23 cases of employee fraud took more than five years to discover.

Similar to the past two studies, there were high levels of depression reported amongst many of the perpetrators.

For a full copy of the report, please go to https://warfield.com.au/publications/